Prior to independence in 1957, the concept of public housing was
known as ‘the institutional quarters’ (Agus 1989b). Under this concept,
the British administration provided housing facilities for the upper
class British employees who worked in public institutions such as hospitals, schools and district offices. The only programme aimed at providing housing for the Malayan people was part of the British
administration strategy to weaken the support for communist insurgencies by concentrating on the resettlement of Chinese residents in
the New Villages all over the country. After independence, the concept
of public housing changed from merely providing housing for government officials to that of the home owning democracy, a vision for the
housing of all sections of society. As one element of this, the public
low cost housing programme was implemented and targeted
specifically towards poor households whose incomes were below
Malaysian Ringgit (RM) 300 a month.
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The low cost housing programme was part of the general approach
towards meeting housing and other social and economic needs that
can be seen to be governed by a number of organising principles. A
central objective of successive Malaysian governments was that of
achieving rapid economic growth. Initially, this was pursued through
the strategy of the development of import substitution industries that
entailed the establishment of centrally located, labour intensive manufacturing industries. These required the concentration of labour in
urban centres that, in turn, required the migration from rural areas and
the provision of sufficient housing to meet the needs of the new urban
dwellers. However, the particular economic model pursued also

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